When we think of adversity, we instantly think of it as something negative. It’s so easy for us to forget that things happen for a reason. Adversity and change could be either good or bad. It’s up to us to determine what we do with our circumstances.
As long as you live, you will continuously experience new things. You accomplish one thing, you overcome one thing, and then here comes another. That’s life. The reality is that we all have pain, but we have to turn our pain into power.
How do we do it? Watch this video to find out!
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Have you ever heard the saying “life is 10% what happens to you and 90% what you do about it? I struggled for decades worrying about the wrongs of life. Living life as a victim and not a conqueror. One day I decided that it had to be a calling. I mean, why else would everything that you ever saw on a lifetime movie, happen to little ole’ me? I’ve heard the term “calling” over and over again in my life however I believed that it only pertained to ministers, pastors, preachers, whatever you call them. After I fired my boss, I learned that you can literally use anything that you've been through and monetize it.
When I say monetize, I don’t mean make money off of your story. I mean use the lessons of life, the loss, the fear, the traumas to heal, deal and grow. As you evolve around the healing process, write about it (blog, journal), talk about it (podcast, YouTube, television), and live out loud.
Why Should You Live Out Loud?
When we live out loud, we serve as an influencer, an educator a mentor and an advocate. Oftentimes, people get quiet when adversity strikes. Diagnosis scare people, trauma paralyses people often causing them to seek solace in a cocoon. We have to stop isolating and start building a supportive community one person at a time.
Back to the topic at hand. I want to help people learn how to monetize adversity. You know, when we think of adversity, we think about things that are negative, we think about things that we've been through and we always want to, you know, wah, wah, you know, this happened to me, but we have to realize that things happen to us for a reason. You know, change can be good, it could be bad, but the thing about change
is that either way, it's a lesson.
Change is A Teacher
And lessons are meant to be learned. It's up to us to determine what we do with it. Now I teach people how to turn their pain into power. It kind of helps that I'm a psychologist. I worked in the prisons, law enforcement and treatment centers.
And the reality is, a lot of people have been through a lot of things. We all go through things and we're going to continue to go through things. It seems like you accomplish one thing, you overcome one thing and boom, here comes another. But I'm gonna tell y'all the secret, that's called life. The key is figuring out how to combat it.
How do you keep rolling with it?
How do you you conquer adversity?
Conquering adversity by using your pain or past to benefit your future.
Have you ever heard of the profit/loss margin? Apply it to pain/power. I used to think that I was a magnet for chaos. I later realized that it could be a good thing. Have you ever heard the phrase, "God won't give you what you can't handle". It drove me crazy to hear that. Then I thought, what if that's true? I must be strong as an ox. You know, we certainly think about things that happen to us as children in adolescence and then adulthood. It compiles over time.
What do you do with it all?
Memories build and they just pile up on each other and they just pile up and they just pile up and they just pile up and then you get to a point where you can't remember everything, you lose details, you lose seasons, you lose years, people tell me things and I'm like that really happened? I really don't remember. That's because like 10,000 things happen and the brain begins to protect itself, blocking things out.
But if we keep a record, we can reflect as we evolve. The same situation could mean different things at different times. Same instance, different season.
And we have to learn to use each lesson, as it may repeat until we get it right. Because nothing is in vain.And so I want to talk to you guys about turning your pain into power because we all have pain. However, everyone lives in their pain differently. You know I mean. It's something that everybody has, though it looks different and manifests differently. It's not a thing of, you know, you have more than me or your pain is worse than mine. It's just reality that we all have pain. And we have to turn it in to power.
So the first step,
1. Take Inventory of Your Pain
Take inventory of your pain and learn how to turn it into your superpower. Now I have a product and everybody asked me what is a superpower? A superpower is anything it could be praying, it could be your resources, it could be your education, it could be the totality of all of it. You're taking everything that you have, and you're putting it together and you're using it for your good. This is how you turn your pain into power. Step one is all 10 steps. It's putting it all together to make it work for you. You can use it in relationships, you can use it in your business, you can use it in parenting, you can use it in schooling.
You can use it any and everywhere at any time. You know why?
"Your superpower is you, you are your power. "
Figure out how to stop looking at pain as a weakness and use it as a strength.
2. Promote and Demote People In Your Life
Promote and demote the people in your life, that are affecting you favorably or adversely. Now we know everybody comes into our lives for a reason. We don't know the reason immediately. We may even get bad feelings about somebody because we know that it's not a good thing. But I tell everybody, no matter whether it's good or bad, there's a lesson in it. Make sure that you remain open to receive what you are meant to get from every interaction. Promote the right people in your life. If you have somebody that is investing in you, take the time to figure out what it is that they see in you that you don't see in yourself or what they're telling you about yourself that you didn't realize. That's how my business started as people started investing in me and people started seeing something in me that I didn't see in myself, and then I started to believe in them. I said, You know what? Maybe they know something, I don't know. Let me tap into that. Take your time with this exercise. Make a list of the people that are influential to you and give them. a promotion. Still need help? Those people that support you, those people that invest in you, those people that are your cheerleaders, whether you want them to be or not the people that have always cheered you on and you're like, "What is wrong with them" tap into that. They are a reflection of you.
The demoting part will make or break you. Sometimes, we grant access to the wrong people. In these instances, we have to gain the strength to deny access. Revoke the pass, card, delete the phone number and change your routine. If you allow people access to you, it's never too late, that access can be denied.
You can ruin your life, your business, your marriage, your relationships, your future, your seasons, your projects if you allow access to the wrong people, and energy. You have to make sure that you are not allowing people in your life that are going to ruin your dream, your mindset, your soul or anything that you need to protect. The most valuable tool that you have is your mind. Access denied could refer to social media, television, or other sources of infiltration. Don't always assume that this level of influence only comes in the form of people.
Never be afraid to demote someone, if your intuition tells you that they are harmful, your intuition is something that you should always listen to. It is a gift of protection.
So promote and demote people accordingly.
3. Change Your Environment
I don't know how to tell you well, I'm a military wife, and I have to change my environment all the time. Although I'm not happy about that, the reality is, that a lot of people never change their environment. They want their world to change. They want their life to change, but they're never willing to change where they are or where they go. Sometimes you have to do just that. You get stuck and you wonder why you're stuck. Well, you're stuck because you're not willing to make changes. The first step to change, is your environment. A lot of times it starts with your environment and ends with your environment. You can change your job, you can change your apartment, you can change the people around you but you're still in the same city that has a black hole. You know, that has no advantage, no opportunity, negative energy, negative memories and just darkness.
What can you do, you're stuck, you're killing yourself and you're just going in a cycle that's not going to get you anywhere. Change your environment. Never be afraid to change an environment. That could mean even if you work from home, get up and go to Starbucks. Sometimes you will learn, you will grow, you will feel things that you can't feel just doing the same thing every day. So never be afraid to change your environment.
4. Seek Help
What does seek help mean? It can mean therapy or coaching. So, you know, many of us are coaches.
But coaches need coaches. Therapists have therapists. Leaders have mentors and advisors.
Mmm, educational levels don’t matter, environment doesn’t matter? I used to think that, you know, a therapist, or even preachers, we think preachers don't need help, no one is exempt.
Everybody, I don't care who you are. You need help. We're not designed to live life alone. We're not designed to go through things alone. We go through pain, grief, sorrow, marriage, divorce, childbirth, child loss, we don't do these things and we're not supposed to do them by ourselves. You know, whether you're a business owner, you can't build your business by yourself. I know somebody on here is trying. And I see you're trying, you can't do it by yourself. Because you're not going to think of everything. You're going to need a sounding board, you're going to need somebody to talk to, to bounce things off of and you need to do that because otherwise you're gonna be stagnant. You're gonna be stagnant in life. You're gonna be stagnant in business, you can be stagnant spiritually.
Yeah, I said that spiritually. Make sure that you are allowing resources and people and good embed, you know, even when you're talking to someone in your business, and they just, they're, they're shutting you down and they're just making you feel like you're not getting in
Where you're gonna learn from, so seek help, therapy, coaching, a village, whatever, whatever it means, you know, group up, you know you need you need to have people in your life for different reasons. And don't try to do it alone.
5. Build A Village
It goes along with number four. Don't do it alone. So I know I talked to a lot of people did this included and we talked about meetups and support groups. I have about 20 support groups online and people say why because every support group is different. You know, I have a support group work in one for military wives. I can't talk to somebody that's not a military wife about the military wife. You can't talk to somebody about being a business owner. That's not a business owner. You can't talk to somebody that's married. If you know the people aren't married, so build a village and this doesn't mean that you only have to have one village. Build as many as you need. As we go through life, we're going to hit different stages, we're going to hit different seasons, we're going to encounter different issues. Growth, I mean, I'm having a 38th birthday and a few days off, and at 35 I had a midlife, midlife crisis. I started making changes, as I started wanting different things in life. I took a look in my past, in my future, I started looking at the people behind me that weren't moving. I realized that stagnation was contagious. I had goals but my friends didn't look like my goals. Your village needs to reflect where you're going. It also needs to reflect where you've been. So build your village according to your needs and your wants.
6. Make Personal Development A Priority
Okay, so, think we're on number six, make personal development a priority.
Now, a lot of people in here specifically in other business groups, focus so much on our business, well some on social media and need to focus more on growth and development.
"You can't build a business if you're jacked up personally."
I'm gonna say that again. You cannot build a business if you are jacked up personally.
You have to get your life right, in order for anything that you touch to flourish.
Because if you're a mess, everything that you represent will be a mess. And I've been a mess. So you have to make sure that you are working on personal development. I do it at least an hour a day. Whether it's watching devotions, I just watch Michael Todd, Steve Furtick, Lisa Bevere, Priscilla Shirer, doesn't matter if you're faithful or faithless. You need to make sure that you are filling yourself and that you are healing and that you are dealing and that you are doing what you need to do. So that you can produce, you cannot produce anything, if you are an internal mess. Personal Development also means growth. You have to learn, you have to continue to learn you cannot feel like you know everything that you need to know and still build. A building needs stacks of a variety of materials on top. What are you doing for personal development?
7. Set Attainable Goals
Set attainable goals, and I can make this number one I can make all these number one job. Set attainable goals. I know for me, I'd never set attainable goals. You know, I would commit to something I would commit to getting my master's degree but I didn't see myself on the other side of it, I didn't see myself attaining what I set out to do.
Setting attainable goals means not just making a vision board at New Year's, it means making goals monthly, weekly, daily, however often you need to do it. Don't be afraid to adjust them and adapt them because you may set goals that are here when you're already here. Make sure that your goals are also adaptable to who you're becoming and how you evolve. Set attainable goals and put them somewhere that you can see them, don't just put them in a book and put them away. Put them somewhere where you can actually see the goals. Recap: make personal development priority, set attainable goals. Yes.
7. Train Your Brain
We talk about mindset all the time and mindset, mindset, mindset. But the reality is, you have to train your brain. What do I mean by that? Well, as a psychologist, I used to really look at addicts and people, you know, clients and wonder, how do you explain to them, what you're trying to do for them? The introduction of new things, and trying to get rid of old ways, and habits and behavior traits, you have to train your brain. Introducing new strategies through personal development, through the introduction of new people that you're talking to, with networking and resource building, you're going to be introduced to new things. You have to actually get rid of some of the old things so that you can bring the new things in and implement them. The key to growth is execution. You have to live intentionally. Make sure that you are allowing room to be trained. You have to train the brain for the outcome that you want. And this is called mindset shifting, but I call it training the brain.
Make sure you're doing this daily because it takes time. It's not going to happen the first time you have to keep reintroducing things, reintroducing things and make it happen.
Envision where you want to go? If you have a goal, you have to envision it fulfilled. Time to step into abundance. Don't sabotage your goals. Put it out there for accountability purposes.
See yourself doing what it is that you want to do. Don't see yourself striving for it, see yourself accomplished. Because when we see ourselves on the other side and we see ourselves, doing whatever it is that we want to do.
You try differently. You try harder, you don't let things get in your way. You don't make things a mountain, you know, you let it be a molehill. Start thinking differently. So that has to do with confidence too. And so when you see yourself being who you are designed to be, you'll be heard differently, I promise and message me if you have any questions about that.
Practice visualizing daily that's right self sabotage, said I'm the master is self sabotage. That's how I know how to write this stuff up. Alright, so train your brain and that has to do with confidence building it has to do with the personal development. You know, personal development is a thing because when I started looking at Lisa bugbear and Priscilla Shire, and Lisa beard started talking about the Lioness I couldn't relate. I was like, you know, she's in there, but I don't know how to let her out and I started listening to these things and so when you can't think of these things on your own, start looking at the people who were the confidence that you want to, to, you know, where, you know, look at who you want to be like him and see who you see yourself being and follow that because as leaders, it is our responsibility to find those resources and adapt. Don't stop train your brain.
8. Expect Abundance
I had a problem with this my whole life. And so I would look at things and I just I accepted that I was always going to be a single mom and that I was always going to be an employee, which I consider a bad word now. I always saw myself being a follower because I was scared to leave but I knew I was always designed to be a leader.
Expect abundance! When you start expecting Abundance you will not tolerate, tolerate, tolerate foolishness.
The best word I can give you "foolishness". There's no other word for it. When you expect abundance and you realize and you see yourself differently, you won't accept anything else. You won't accept anything for your time for your family. For your money, you'll start seeing your value in your work, you'll start building your confidence you'll start looking differently, you'll start feeling differently, you start eating differently, sleeping differently, expect abundance, and I don't care where you're at, you can be on brick one.
And I want you to expect abundance.
Expect it because when you expect it, your life will reflect it.
10. Determined
Your pain can map your future when you are determined to succeed. Determine what your pain means for your purpose and how it maps your future.
Because I have chronic illness because my pain literally ate me alive. I became sick, I became paralyzed. I became I had blood clots in my lungs. I got diagnosed with fibromyalgia emphysema, I mean, you name it, I have it. And it was because my body was just not absorbing it was it was it was holding all of that pain internally. And it was so conscious that it affects us whether we deal or not. And so I started understanding that I had to do something with my pain, because if I left it in here, it was gonna tell me and now I teach people how to use it. Because if you let it out, and you use it to propel you forward, it is the best form of healing you can ever imagine. Not only are you killing it, but you're helping people. And so when you're helping yourself, and you're helping others, that's called servant leadership.
You were designed for that. You have a lot of people who will never step up to do it. You have a lot of people who never own it. But we were designed to be free, not bonded by pain. And so we have to learn how to externalize our pain and not allow it to kill us internally. And so that is how you turn your pain into power. And I just want you guys to understand that no matter what happened to you in your life. You are powerful.
Love, y'all.
Anika Wilson